AF ROSA THE ELF
I started poking around to see if I could rind anything searching "Air Force Research Lab ROSA Elf"
BINGO
This NASA Chronology of 2009 is interesting.
<Watch the water!
DECEMBER 22
Soyuz TMA-17, carrying Timothy J. Creamer, Soichi Noguchi, and Oleg V. Kotov, docked with
the ISS at 22:48 (GMT). An automated docking system successfully brought the craft into port
on the Earth-facing side of the Russian Zarya module. Hatches opened at 00:30 (GMT). The new
arrivals floated onto the station
<wearing red Santa hats and elf hats and carrying a small
Christmas tree and a white sack of gifts. Jeffrey N. Williams and Maxim V. Suraev welcomed
them on board the ISS, where they would live for six months as members of the Expedition 22
and Expedition 23 missions.182
footnote 182
182 James Dean, “New Crew Set To Begin Six-Month Stay on Station,” Florida Today (Brevard, FL), 23 December
2009; Clara Moskowitz, “New Crew Arrives at Space Station,” Space.com, 23 December 2009, http://www.space.
com/7704-crew-arrives-space-station.html (accessed 9 January 2012).
September 23
The
third instrument was the Italian-designed Radio Occultation Sounder for the Atmosphere
(ROSA), which would observe distortions in GPS signals passing through the upper atmosphere.
ROSA would build temperature and humidity profiles, determining the electron density in the
ionosphere. The rocket also carried six nano satellites: two German Rubin satellites; Beesat, of
the Technical University Berlin; UWE 2, of the University of Würzburg in Germany; ITU pSAT,
of Istanbul Technical University in Turkey; and SwissCube 1, of the École Polytechnique
Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland.142
September 24
ROSA Radio Occultation Sounder for the Atmosphere
SpaceX announced the successful demonstration of a laser-imaging detection and ranging
(LIDAR) sensor called <DragonEye, a proximity sensor that had launched aboard NASA’s Space
Shuttle Endeavor on 15 July 2009 in Mission STS-127. With the help of NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office, SpaceX had tested DragonEye in proximity with the ISS, in
preparation for future visits of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to the ISS. DragonEye would guide
the Dragon craft as it approached the space station, providing three-dimensional images based on
the amount of time needed for a single laser pulse from the sensor to reach a target and to bounce
back. DragonEye had used flight data gathered on board Endeavour to detect the ISS
successfully and to track it through various approach and departure maneuvers. Following
Endeavour’s return to Earth, DragonEye had returned to SpaceX for evaluation. SpaceX’s
Falcon-9 launch vehicle and Dragon were both under contract to NASA to provide cargo
resupply to the ISS, following the Space Shuttle’s retirement. The contract included 12 flights
between 2010 and 2015, with SpaceX representing the only COTS contender with the ability to
return cargo to Earth.143
Water on the Moon
NASA announced that its Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), on board ISRO’s Chandrayaan-1
spacecraft, had detected water molecules in the polar regions of the Moon.
https://history.nasa.gov/sp4035.pdf